


The Future's Uncertain

by rosa_himmelblau



Series: The Roadhouse Blues [11]
Category: Wiseguy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-05
Updated: 2019-08-05
Packaged: 2020-08-10 02:54:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20128174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosa_himmelblau/pseuds/rosa_himmelblau
Summary: Depression is like a black hole: it pulls in everything it can get hold of.





	The Future's Uncertain

When Sonny had gotten out of bed in the morning, he could still see Vinnie sitting in the goddamned corner of the goddamned room, unshaved, the goddamned headphones growing out of his head, face in his hands, fingers rubbing his eyes like he was trying to wake up, only Sonny knew damn good and well that was the last thing he wanted. He wanted to crawl back under the covers and go back to sleep, only he couldn't, so he was knocking himself out with that garbage can rattling he called music. Sonny had yanked the headphones off, flipped the stereo off. "You think I don't know what you're thinking?"

"Yeah." Vinnie's voice had been an angry monotone. "I think you don't know what I'm thinking. I think you don't got a clue what I'm thinking, even when I tell you. So why fucking bother?" He'd grabbed the headphones back, turned the stereo back on, and up, for good measure.

"What're you, trying to deafen yourself?"

"Shut up!" Vinnie had yelled, turning his back on Sonny, then he'd muttered something Sonny didn't get.

Again, the stereo off. "What?"

Vinnie had turned to face him, what face there was behind all the hair. "I said, I liked you better when you were dead. Then you only showed up when I was asleep, and if I wanted to get rid of you, all I had to do was wake up."

"You mope around here like you can see the end of the fucking world—"

"Get off my back! You don't have a fucking clue—"

"Oh, yeah? You're the only who lost his life, his name, everything gone?"

"You don't understand—"

"Poor, misunderstood Vinnie, whining about how he misses his mom—"

That was usually the point where Vinnie swung on him, the point where the cold fire of angry words became the inferno of physical confrontation, and the heat either burned off the anger or—something else happened. Either way, it ended the argument.

But Vinnie had just looked at him, eyes dead and hopeless. Then he'd walked out of the apartment, slamming the door behind him.

It wasn't the first time he'd walked out, and Sonny hadn't expected it to be the last. He'd gotten dressed, an angry internal monologue he couldn't shut off playing in his head. _Why'd I ever take up with him again in the first place? He didn't fuck up my life bad enough the first time, I had to come back for more? I ought'a be glad he's gone, hope he doesn't come back—in fact, I ought'a move on before he gets back. _ He'd gone to the bank, flirted with the teller, then he'd gone to the gym.

Sonny had thrown himself into a hard workout, hoping it would burn off his anger. It had helped, made him hungry for the breakfast he'd skipped, so he decided to have a long lunch. He was in no hurry to get home to see the second act of Vinnie Terranova as Hamlet.

The monologue continued, though it had mellowed some. _What the fuck's wrong with him anyway? Yeah, sure, so he had to dump his old life. So what? Didn't I have to do the same thing? And I'm fine. So what the fuck's wrong with him?_

_It's not my fault he had to leave his life—what was left of it. He was unhappy when I got him—_

_but what's he unhappy about?_

Sonny didn't know, and for most of the day he hadn't cared. He'd spent the afternoon at a movie, and by the time he'd gotten home, he'd been feeling pretty good. He'd always been able to pull Vinnie out of his downward spirals, once he put his mind to it. He'd been in the mood to give it his full attention.

At first glance all he'd seen was that the apartment looked wrong. For a few minutes Sonny hadn't quite been able to figure out what the matter was. Then he'd realized that none of Vinnie's clothes were strewn about the way they usually were. _Maybe he got fed up with the mess too, or he's trying do something to make up—_ Then he'd seen that the stereo was gone.

That had led him, logically, to robbery, but the TV was still there, and the computer. Sonny had gone to the closet and found that Vinnie's big suitcase was gone, and all his clothes. He'd passed Vinnie's car on his way in, but then, he'd been gone several hours, plenty of time for Vinnie to gather up his stuff, find a place, and dump it. One thing he knew about Vinnie: his living standards were low enough to assure him of a satisfactory place to stay as long as he had three dollars in his pocket.

Sonny walked over to where the stereo had been and ran his finger through the dust that had accumulated around it. No note, just dust. He went to the answering machine and punched the message button. No new messages.

Sonny dropped to the sofa. "Where the hell would he go?" It couldn't have been too far; he hadn't had **that** much time, even with the car. Sonny went out and got in the car, for a second just sitting there as if psychic vibrations would tell him where to go. He checked the odometer, but since he had no idea what it had read before, that was no help. Why had he left his car, anyway? It was **his** damn car, even if Sonny had had to buy it back for him.

The only other time Vinnie had been gone for any length of time—a day and a half—he hadn't taken his stuff, so this was a new twist. If Sonny went looking for him, he usually found him at a bar within walking distance. "If he doesn't show by morning, I'll check the place out," Sonny told himself.

He sat up 'til just after two, not really waiting for him, just not tired, not looking at the corner near where the stereo had been. Finally, when the cable stations yielded nothing but bad stand-up and infomercials, he turned in. Vinnie would find his way home when he was ready.

Sonny woke up in the morning alone. He wasn't worried; Vinnie could take care of himself. He just didn't like it, this chickenshit running away when things got tough. So he took the stereo because they'd fought about it. He'd bring it back. It was no big deal.

Sonny got up, stretched, and started making the bed. When he got around to Vinnie's side, he saw something in the ashtray: two keys and a key chain. Vinnie's house and car keys, and the keychain Sonny had given him.

Now that was disturbing. Sonny picked up the keychain, tossed it from one hand to the other. "Shit. The goddamn car is yours!" He was going to have to go looking for him, and part of him really didn't want to. In no hurry, he showered, dressed, and made himself breakfast. Then he went out, got in the car, and headed for the nearest bar. If Vinnie was in the same condition he'd been the last time, Sonny would need the car to get him home again.

But Vinnie wasn't in that bar, or the next one, or the one after that. Sonny was tired, and he'd struck out so often he was starting to wonder if he'd been wrong about Vinnie's destination. "If he's got his own place, he could be there getting plastered in the privacy of his own home. Shit. But why didn't he take his car?" But he wasn't giving up 'til he'd seen the inside of every dive the city had to offer. He'd seen enough already to have developed a look known well to bartenders; in the last half dozen he'd been immediately recognized as a watchdog rather than a customer.

It was just starting to get dark when he walked into a bar where he didn't have to ask; the bartender looked at him as if he'd been waiting for Sonny, and when Sonny stepped up to the bar, he gestured to Vinnie, sitting alone at the opposite wall, and asked, "Is he yours?"

"Yeah. He been causing problems?"

"Not yet. But he's pretty pissed off at whoever he's talking to." Sonny glanced down at Vinnie again, saw he really was alone, and started to ask, but the bartender anticipated him. "Whoever it is, he brought him in with him. If it's you, you might not wanna get too close."

_Oh, it’s like that._ "Thanks."

Sonny walked down to the end of the bar, sat down next to Vinnie, facing him. Vinnie ignored him, but motioned to the bartender. "That's enough appetizer," he said, pushing his beer glass away. "Let's move on to the main course. Double bourbon, straight up. And if you tell me I've had enough, I'll kill you." The words were clear, unslurred, the tone not threatening, but their matter-of-factness got him his drink. "That goes for you, too, whoever you are," Vinnie told Sonny.

"Drink your drink and come on," Sonny answered tiredly.

"So, big deal, you tracked me down. Jeez, took you long enough, too. ** I** could'a found **you** in less than an hour. That's training, pal," Vinnie finished with disgust.

"Yeah, great, you hide better'n I seek, you could have your own superhero comic book. C'm'on, I'll buy you a cape on the way home."

Vinnie was looking at him, his eyes bleary but the anger was sharp and dangerous. 

Not wanting to hear the words, Sonny said them himself, "Yeah, yeah, I know, by now McPike not only would'a found you, he'd've checked out your new place, had it repainted and the fumigators in. Too fucking bad I'm just an amateur, but I'm all you got. Now come on."

"Fuck off. I'm not going with you. And you can leave Frank out of it."

"I will if you will," Sonny agreed. "Like that'll ever happen," he couldn't resist adding.

"How often do you dream about** me **dying, anyway, huh? Never, right? Never, and you know why? Because I didn't jump off that damn bridge and if I had, you wouldn't've been there to see it, 'cause you were hanging out on the beach in Miami or where-the-fuck-ever, not even thinking about me."

"I was thinking about you," Sonny objected, wondering, _bridge? We're back to the bridge?_

"Yeah, some random thought while you checked out the bikinis. So much for you loved me. You think you know how I feel? Lemme tell you how I feel—I feel like I fucking wasted my life, that's how I feel. You're pissed 'cause everything you 'worked' for was taken from you? Well, everything you worked for was against the fucking law! You should'a seen that coming! You should'a seen **me** coming, only you were so much smarter'n everybody—you should'a listened to Dave. And me, I should'a listened to my mother, should'a seen you how she did, only I couldn't. I should'a told Frank to go fuck himself an' told you about the hit, only I couldn't do that either. I couldn't do anything except watch you destroy both of us! And then you opted out while I had to live with the consequences, an' you think you know how I feel? You don't have a clue! Another pin on my lapel? They gave me a fucking party! I was the new wunderkind—you know what that's like, having people congratulate you for murdering your best friend? Well, I'll tell you, it hurts, it never stops hurting, and you were there every night wanting to know how I could do it to you!"

Sonny damped down the need to yell back at him. Right now all he wanted was to get him out of the bar, away from the curious alcoholics, to someplace private where they could "talk" each other senseless. "C'm'on, let's get out of here, we can—" He tried to ease him off the barstool, but Vinnie jerked away from him.

"I'm not going with you! God, I thought I'd gotten rid of you in the hospital. They were supposed to fix my foot and instead they start playing around in my head—what, did you send out invitations? They kept feeding me drugs and every time I shut my eyes, there you were, tempting me to go to hell—they even offered me the electricity to do it with." Vinnie gulped down the remainder of his drink. "Bad enough what I was seeing when it was just the drugs; I know what I would'a seen if they'd started pumping in the voltage." Vinnie dropped his glass on the bar, turned to Sonny, grabbing hold of his jacket. "How could you do that to me? You loved me, huh? Well, how the fuck was I supposed to get over you?"

"You weren't," Sonny answered, and even in the face of this horrific pain, he couldn't help but feel a tremendous satisfaction. Why would he ever have wanted Vinnie to get over him?

Vinnie let go of him. "Another," he said to the bartender, who looked at Sonny.

"Why don't you take him home?"

Sonny gave Vinnie a long, calculating look, took a hundred out of his wallet and dropped it on the bar. "Gimme the bottle," he said. The bartender didn't move, and Sonny looked over at him, added a second hundred to the first. "Don't worry, he's not driving, I've got his car keys."

"Don't you forget you're responsible for him," the bartender said, handing him the bottle.

Sonny pulled the pourer off the top, took a swallow, handed Vinnie the bottle. "You got complaints? Go on, let's hear 'em."

Vinnie looked at the bottle with great suspicion, then took a drink. "Who are you, my shrink?"

"No, but maybe you could use one."

"No, I remember you. How could I forget? You were the guy in Seattle who wanted me to eat my gun, the one who thought the bottom of that bridge looked good, the one who kept telling me I owed it to you. But now you're here to fix things, right?"

"Hey, if I wanted you dead, I'd'a done it myself," Sonny defended himself automatically. _How can you believe I wanted you dead? After all'a this, how can you still believe that?_

"Oh, yeah, that's right, I forgot, you're the original Mr. Do-It-Yourself, proud of the sweat on your brow and the blood on your hands—"

"Keep your voice down," Sonny said evenly, his own voice very quiet.

"Why the hell **didn't** you kill me, huh? Oh, right, I remember now, you wanted me to spend my life waiting for you to come after me. And you got your wish! You know how many nights I was scared to go to sleep because I knew you were there waiting for me?"

Sonny took the bottle back, drank, put it back into Vinnie's trembling hands. His own hands were steady, but he was trembling inside with Vinnie's pain. He leaned closer, his voice intimately soft. "I didn't kill you because I couldn't. OK?"

Vinnie looked at him, really seeing him. "You didn't have to. You left me to do it myself."

Sonny shook his head, took the bottle from Vinnie and set it on the bar. "I didn't want you dead then. I don't want you dead now. C'm'on."

"Why did you wait so long?" Vinnie asked stubbornly.

"What, wait? I hit every bar in a five mile radius—"

"No." Vinnie took hold of the sleeve of his jacket. "Why didn't you tell me sooner? Why did it take me nearly dying and completely losing my mind for you to come back?"

Sonny couldn't meet his eyes. "Who knew it made a difference to you?" he asked with a shrug.

Vinnie started to say something, then just looked away.

"Can we get out of here now?" Sonny asked.

"Yeah, sure." He sounded on the verge of collapsing.

"Can you even walk?"

"Yeah, I can walk." But he leaned on Sonny as they left the bar.


End file.
